Hope you enjoy the antics of my two latest Teds, Knit-Ted and Knot-ted who met today on Grandma's parlour table.
Knit-ted was waiting patiently in the warm sunshine for Grandma to return and sew up his foot but while he was sat there his new found friend Knot-ted, while trying to get to the jammy biscuit, became tangled in the trail of wool that was still joined to Knit-Ted's foot! Try as this small furry Ted might to untangle himself each movement he made just made matters worse for his friend the knitted bear.
I hope Grandma will return soon and rescue both Teds!
Thank you Christelle and Ruth for the teddy bears that inspired this painting.
I had a lovely christmas with many special gifts from my family including a selection of tiny brushes and an ingenious refillable clean water container which disposes of the dirty water and refills with clean at the press of a button. Its such a clever idea for clean water fanatics like me.
In addition to these lovely family gifts I was also given a beautiful original watercolour from a very good friend. Each year, a group of artists who belong to 'Art Colony' which was formed by Jane Freeman draw names and we send a piece of art to one other member as part of our Secret Santa exhange. This year, my Secret Santa painting was from Christiane Fortin a fellow Canadian. I just had to share this painting from her with you all. Isn't it beautiful.
You can see that our younger dog Ella approves too. Thank you Christiane. I will treasure it always. Just as an update...In moments between Christmas celebrations I have had a couple of opportunities to work on my Ted painting. Hopefully I have it finished soon for you to see. Ona
Its such fun setting the scene for a painting, creating the atmosphere for the main characters. My husband says the curtains in this painting remind him of his Grandma. The knitting and knitted tea cozy certainly remind me of my Nan. I had to include a jammy biscuit too as both my grandparents loved them.
I wanted to create that feeling of light and warmth with a very homey touch for my new bears. Next I get the fun of bringing them to life but not until I have helped out Santa's elves and done some much needed wrapping. I probably won't get chance to post again until after christmas so to all that celebrate it. Have a wonderful time.
The idea for this painting began when I was given two teddies. One very fluffy and slightly concerned looking teddy was sent to me from Christelle in Australia and a hand knitted teddy came from Ruth in England. Thank you both for your lovely gifts.
I have been working on the background over the last week. Colour choice is so important to me in helping to create a mood or feel in a painting. I wanted a warm, sunny, loving, homely feel so chose a palette of pinks, yellows and browns with just a hint of green for this painting.
I know the remainder of the painting at the moment is just an assortment of big white spaces but any guesses what the other objects will be in the painting and what the two Ted's will be called?
I am very pleased to let you all know that my painting 'Finishing Touches' has been juried into the 4th Signature American Watercolor Exhibition by Cheng-Khee Chee, AWS, D.F., NWS. The exhibition will take place early next year in Fallbrook California.
It's World Watercolour Day today and what better way to celebrate this great day than by painting and sharing my love of watercolour with you all in two ways...
Firstly,Just in case you are at a loss as to what to paint, I am adding below a step by step guide on how to paint this beautiful box with a pebbled glass lid.
To begin, sketch out the outline below
The box section
1. Wet the area of the box you are going to work on, and then leave till
there is only a slight sheen, then wet again and wait until shiny but
not really wet.
2. Position the paper so that the paint can run in the direction you
want, then using quin red or similar colour put some paint on the top
section and leave it to gravity to do the rest. Stand by with a tissue
just in case, but with practice, knowing how long to wait before
applying the paint, you will not often need it. Leave it to dry really
well (about 30-45 mins).
3. Re wet the area carefully with a flat glaze brush and repeat step 2 using Perylene maroon.
4. You can do this with each section individually or work on another
section of the box while waiting for the first to dry. Do not work on
touching sections consecutively though, and do wait until all the shine
has gone and it's light touch dry before angling the paper in a
different way. You want the water to work with you and not against you.
5. Now you need to work on each part of the box in the opposite
direction to the way you began. Wet the area again very carefully and
put the paint on the opposite side (the side that probably still has
white parts) and let gravity do its thing again.
6. Repeat with each area, first working one way and then, once dry, turn
180 degrees and repeat. You are just building the texture; don’t worry
about the shadows yet. You can leave some areas white though if they are
in the light.
7. Now using a mix of perylene maroon and a touch of neutral tint start
to work in suggestions of shadows wet on dry. Then using a damp brush,
soften the edges.
8. With a fine brush, add in the fine line shadow under the lip of the edges of the box.
The pebbled glass
Wet on ever so slightly damp paper, paint in the color of the under rim
of the box and the side that shows through the glass. Remember these
will not be straight lines because the rough surface of the glass
will distort the shapes behind. Using wet on damp, gradually build
up the color. You cannot use gravity for this because the lines will
be distorted, so will wiggle around with your brush. I use a fine
brush for this because I like them, but it doesn’t need to be ultra
fine. Keep the whole area ever so slightly lighter in tone than
the actual box.
Paint in the colored pieces of glass. You are just painting in the color at this stage, the texture will come later.
Paint in the shadows on the floor behind the glass. I used a mixture of
the maroon and neutral tint. Again these shadows will not be straight
lines. At the same time, you can paint in the shadows on the floor.
When dry, use a fine brush to dot in the darker areas on the glass. I
just used a darker red/grey mix for the white areas and a darker maroon
or quin red mix for those areas. It looks a bit weird at the moment but
don’t worry.
When the paint is dry, wet a flat wash brush with plain water and gently
brush over the glass area. The water will then work to gently soften
and blend the dots together and create the pebbled glass look.
The rim of the box
Use a mixture of quin gold, neutral tint or a grey complimetary mix, and a red brown (I used Indian
red) and fill in the paint on the rim. For the shiny areas I just added
some iridescent watercolor mix to some quin gold deep and touched in these
areas once the paint was dry.
I Hope you will enjoy following the steps above and creating your
own gift box. Why not add something inside your box and give the exercise as a
Christmas or holiday gift to someone special.
Please note this image is not subject to the usual copyright rules so please enjoy painting it yourself.
Secondly, as it is World Watercolour day today, I thought that this would also be a great time to share with you a review of my watercolours painted and/or exhibited in 2012. Thank you all for your support this year.Click on the play button below to see my slideshow or go directly to you tube to see it full screen
My Nan used to tell me as a child that when my Teddy was threadbear and his stuffing was coming out it was because I had filled him so full with my love there wasn't enough room for some of the stuffing too. This is what I was thinking about as I painted the old Ted. You can see from the old man's eyes and whole demeanor how much he loves his bear and I wanted this love to be visible on the bear too.
If there is any one thing that symbolises
childhood it's a Teddy bear. Every parent watches with wonder as their baby goes from chewing
on their favourite bear to making him dance around and tell stories. As your child bestows a particular personality on a Teddy you start to play along, and soon you're as attached as the child.
But children grow up and they give up their toys. Often parents though cannot give up the symbol of their children's childhood so easily and so put that bear away safely.
Before we know days turn to months and months into years, Time is mapped with laughter and cheers, the long road sometimes landmarked with sadness and tears. Elders pass and children grow, has it been that long we ask, where does time go? Ryan Guerrero
and then one day, the child that was finds his beloved bear again
and with it his childhood memories and feeling of love and attachment for his bear come flooding back as if the time between then and now never happened. In his heart he is that child once more.
It's wonderful when you have the opportunity to meet other artists who share your joy for painting. Yesterday evening I was asked to give a demonstration at the Don Valley Art club in Toronto.
As I am a slow painter I didn't attempt to do a complete painting in the short time I had. Instead I focused on demonstrating certain techniques that I use when painting portraits of babies or young children.
members of the Don Valley Art Club Watching my demo
My first focus was the eyes for as I have said many times before, they really are the key to a successful portrait.
For my Don Valley friends and my readers of this blog, here are a few important things to remember about eyes
1.
You
can tell the age of the person even if you don’t see the rest of the
face because our brain is extremely good at interpreting facial
features. When we paint or draw eyes though we have to be consiously
aware of some things that normally our brains just process automatically
or we will end up aging the children and not
understanding why.
2. A newborn’s eyes are
2/3 the size of adults and reach adult size by 6-12 years even though the face
isn’t adult size. Therefore, they are larger in comparison to the face and to
the eye socket than an adult. The inner corner of a baby’s eye is completely
covered by a fold of skin that slowly retracts as the bridge of the nose
develops.
Creating a realistic looking eye using my method of glazing taking many many layers so I demonstrated how to begin, by establishing the real darks around and in the corners of the eye and the first few layers of detail and washes on one of the eyes
and then moved onto the second eye to show how, with more layering you can begin to get a sense of depth in the iris and then demonstrated how to push the eye ball back into the socket with the help of shadowing. You can see in the photo below how the iris section and left part of the white of the eye is pushed back but the right side which I hadn't worked on at this point is still level with the skin.
We also talked about looking for the colours under the skin colour which help to shape and form the facial features. Its amazing the colours you can see if you train your eye to look for them.
In the photo below I still have a long way to go but you can begin to see how the glazes of perm rose, ultramarine blue, quin gold and burnt sienna are creating that sense of depth and form. The eye itself at this stage still needs a little more value strengthening and the last layers of skin tones need to be added.
In the photo below you can see the effect that the increase in value creates, really pulling our attention to them. I used the same ref photo that I used in my demo to paint this. I merely tilted the eyes a little to give them a slightly more quizzical look and added the puzzle pieces around them for some fun
Thank you to everyone there for making me feel so welcome.
The old man is now finished and I am beginning to work on the equally old teddy. I will be a while on this as its fiddly work suggesting the worn parts. I haven't got a reference photo for this so I'm just working from imagination and some general photos of old teddy's to give me an idea of how to best suggest that sense of love and friendship that the threadbear texture suggests.
Thank you for all your teddy tales by e mail, here on the blog or on facebook. I have loved reading them. Teddy bears obviously have a special place in many of our hearts.
I have really enjoyed bringing this old man's face to life on the paper. He has such an infectious smile. I have a little bit of hair left to paint behind his ear but as this section falls over the top of his shirt I will paint that in first. I'm so keen to paint the long lost and well loved teddy but I'm going to be good and finish the clothing first.
So how many of you have kept your childhood teddy bears or had them safely kept for you? My grandmother looked after mine after I left home and gave them to me before I moved to Canada. There is a lovely story attached to them. My Nana as I used to call her gave me one when I was about one year old but secretly she had bought two. The idea was that when one got dirty she could swap it for the other so I wouldnt be upset when it needed to be washed. One day, when I was about 2 my grandmother opened her cupboard and I saw the other Teddy peaking out. I was so delighted that she had a teddy just like mine and explained that they really ought to be friends. From then on I had two bears and they went everywhere with me :)
What
better way could there be to spend a cold, windy, rainy day than
creating such a happy smiling face. He lifts my spirits on this gloomy day and makes me smile
back at him as I bring his features to life on the paper.
I secretly
think the brush tickles his nose and thats why he is grinning at me. I know... my imagination gets carried away sometimes.
I still have a long way to go shaping his face but I couldn't resist sharing his smile with you today.
I'm working on another Ted themed painting at the moment.
I had this wonderful reference of another of the volunteers at the local pioneer village that has been on my 'to paint' list for a while now ( I just loved his smiling face). Whenever we visit the village I always like to go and chat to this old gentleman. He has such wonderful stories of his life, particularly his childhood and he relates his memories with such life and animation so he seemed the obvious subject for this particular Ted word painting.
I have now finished the background apart from a couple of washes which will go over both the subjects and background and today began working on the man's face. It's such a delight bringing his character to life as I begin underpinning his features. Of course, I had to begin with his eyes. Don't they just ooze mischief and delight even at this early stage.
I wanted the background to become his memory, in essance a metaphorical tunnel back to his childhood and to mirror so many of our feelings about growing older. It is symbolic of life really because when we are children, we are so eager to forsake what represents youth and grow up. In contrast when we are older something like looking at a much loved teddy makes us yearn with fond memories for those innocent times once more and make us wish we hadn't been in such a hurry to become an adult.
I've had a lot of people asking about cards of my 'Ted' paintings, so I have created deluxe archival quality cards of the first 8 in the series.
This is a photo of the first complete set hot off the press individually bagged and ready to sell. Each are printed on archival paper, have paper inserts and have the stories/information about them on the back of each card. The large cards are 8.5 by 5.5 inches. The panoramic cards are 9 by 4 inches in size.
They make a great collection don't they!
My initial aim was to be able to sell them as individual cards locally but I know many people have asked from much further afield so I have priced up some special packages for you all.
Option 1.... 8 cards (one of each design above) each individually packaged with an envelope and in its own crystal clear bag
Canada and the US: $49 including shipping
International: $55 including shipping
Options 2 and 3...gift boxed sets of cards
Option 2..... A gift boxed Pack of 9 panoramic cards ( 3 each of the 3 different panoramic designs in each box)
Canada and the US: $46 including shipping
International: $49 including shipping
Option 3..... A gift boxed pack of 10 large cards ( 2 each of the 5 different large card designs in each box)
Canada and the US: $60 including shipping
International: $67 including shipping
Send an e mail to ona@onak.ca if you are interested in any of these options.
My painting 'Dream Catcher' received the Cheap Joe's Art Stuff Award at the 44th Annual Watercolor West International Juried Exhibition.
Thank you Marilyn Wear for taking the photograph for me and congratulations on your award too.
The exhibition opened a couple days ago and continues until December 16th so if you are within travelling distance of the Brea Gallery CA, do visit. If you are not able to go you can enjoy a selection of the exhibition on line by going to the Brea Gallery's facebook page Here
It's always great to be able to place that magic read dot on the painting label. 'Fast food fly through' my painting of the magical hummingbirds sold today.
It is also lovely to get so much positive feedback from people who enjoyed looking at my work.
Thank you to so many of my friends locally who popped in to say hi over the weekend. It was so lovely to actually meet in person a couple of my blog readers for the first time too. Now I can put faces to names. Thank you for travelling all that way to come and see me and my work.
I am very pleased to let you all know that 'Time Warp' has been accepted into the
California Watercolor Association 43rd National Exhibition.
It will be
held at the historic Harrington Gallery in the Firehouse Art Center in
Pleasanton, CA and will run from January 17, 2013 to February 16,
2013.
Today was set up day for the Richmond Hill Studio Tour which takes place this weekend. Here is a sneak preview of my space at Boynton Bouse, 1300 Elgin Mills East Richmond Hill. I have 24 original watercolours on exhibition. The Studio tour is open on Saturday and Sunday between 10am and 5 pm.
The December issue of the Watercolor Artist Magazine that I am featured in arrived in the mail today. It feels very special to be featured in it. Thank you Birgit O'Connor for nominating me :)
Thank you also to all of my readers here who have encouraged me over the last couple years. Ona
Life can be a bit of a puzzle sometimes, especially when you are young :)
I have been asked to do a demo early next month on portraiture. I only have an hour and a half for the demo so rather than rush through everything I am going to focus on eyes as they really are the key to a successful portrait.
I painted this small fun painting last week while show sitting at the exhibition to illustrate how eyes really help to convey emotion and tell a story even when the rest of the face is obscured. I wanted to capture that slightly bewildered look in the young child's eyes. I added the puzzle pieces to demonstrate how you can even take a simple exercise such as painting eyes and make it into a fun and meaningful piece of art with a little imagination :)
I was sent the promotional release for the watercolor Artist Magazine 'One's to Watch' feature yesterday
Announcing Watercolor Artistʼs 2012 “Ones to Watch”
Few stories generate as much excitement around the Watercolor Artist offices as the annual “Ones to Watch” feature, published each year in the December issue. In May, the Watercolor Artist editors send out a call to longtime artist friends, asking for the names of students they think show exceptional promise or talented painters who theyʼve recently encountered by way of an exhibition theyʼve juried. The staff then solicits work from each of the nominated artists. Once all the images are in, the editors begin to highlight the standouts.
Editor Kelly Kane looks forward to spotting new talent. “Our goal is to identify up-andcoming watercolor artists who demonstrate both technical skill and unique qualities of self-expression, but who might not otherwise have come to our attention for a few more years; artists we can catch early and watch as they continue to hone their styles and techniques; artists who can teach us all something about commitment, drive and belief in oneʼs self and oneʼs work,” she says.
Congratulations to the 2012 Watercolor Artist “Ones to Watch:”
Bill Bailey | Oakland, Tennessee
Cheng Fen Yeh | Radford, Virginia
Cindy Evans | Williamston, Michigan
Donna Morrison | Tampa, Florida
Joseph Stoddard | Pasadena, California
Lane Hall | Medford, Oregon
Mary Barnett | Boulder, Colorado
Ona Kingdon | Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada
Robin Erickson | Fallbrook, California
Suzanne Reed Fine | Columbus, Georgia
Read more about these artists—and why they were nominated by the top watermedia instructors and exhibition jurors—in the December 2012 issue of Watercolor Artist, available on newsstands Oct. 23, 2012, or in digital format at northlightshop.com.
I can't wait to see how they used what I sent them to write the feature... It's going to be a long few weeks :)
